Saturday, July 11, 2009

Help stop the barbaric declawing of cats

Hi George,
We are just wondering if you know how declawed cats manage without their toe ends and claws ? As we live in England where declawing is thankfully banned, we have no friends without them who we can ask.How do they balance properly to walk,how do they groom their fur to regulate their body temperature and how do they exercise, as we need to dig our claws into our scratching posts to exercise our leg,shoulder and back muscles don't we ? Is that why so many of them get arthritis do you think ?

We know lots of USA cats don't go outside but they still need their claws anyway for all those things and what happens if they escape ? They have no defence have they ? We
heard that some start biting due to being declawed , well we don't blame them ! And we also heard some stop using their litter trays as the first agony of trying with their painful stumps after the operation, stays in their mind forever.
Do you know George, some cats in the USA are even declawed on their back paws too, however do they scratch an itch ? Please sign our petition
Walter and Jozef

PS. That's me Jozef at the top and my friend Walter at the bottom. Both wearing our white bibs. Very smart!

Dear Walter and Jozef,
We UK cats are lucky that vets refuse to do this. I've signed (under Celia's name) the petition on http://www.petitionthem.com/default.asp?sect=detail&pet=4312 And I read your human's blog on http://kattaddorra.blogspot.com/ too.
Personally I feel that the house is much improved with frilled soft furnishings - particularly the arms of armchairs and sofas. I also have enjoyed, in my time, frilling the
edges of long curtains - giving what I call the Bohemian gypsy look. I do have trouble with my human who doesn't share my ideas about decor. But pulling out my claws? She wouldn't be so cruel.
I have seen horrible pictures of cats with their paws bandaged as they recover from this operation. This is mutilation, like cutting the tails off dogs (or, in the USA, cutting their ears too).What is it about humans that they think cutting bits of living animals is OK. Pulling out finger nails was torture done by the Nazis and I think it is torture for animals too. I can't imagine what it is like to live without claws. They are an essential part of me. Imagine not being able to scratch an itch - horrible.
My soft furnishings enthusiasm has been modified by being given a scratching post in every room that I use - one in the bedroom, one in the living room and one in the upstairs bathroom. I use them all and I particularly enjoy the really tatty one that has bits hanging off it. I purrsuaded Celia not to change it for a new one as, like all cats, I like scratching posts that smell of the glands on my paws and that have nice stringy bits to scratch. We cats need to scratch. It is part of our natural behaviour. Apart from the pain of declawing, cats without claws must have difficulty making their living quarters smell right. And smell is so important to us.
Celia uses double sided sticky tape to stop my scratching the furniture (which she claims belongs to her though I know better). The stickiness is horrid so I don't scratch there again for about a month. She says the sofa looks odd with this tape all over it, but if she leaves it there for a month she can take it off for about three months before I notice and start scratching again. There's a posh version costing four times as much called Sticky Paws which looks slightly less odd.
Best of luck with the petition
George
PS. I read this blog on claws too -http://clawsforever.blogspot.com/2009/06/elsie-cant-lose-he-gets-it-both-ways.html

5 comments:

  1. Apes are very limited in their ability to truely appreciate a wide range of household aesthetics. Apes often find reality too painful to look at and turn away, ignoring the awful results of what they do to animals. Everything in ape world must be neat, clean lines, bereft of good smells zzzzz how boring. Somehow the reality of mutilating cats has been cleaned up so that many apes who have this done to their cats are actually purchasing a sugared up version of reality because the vets who declaw just don't tell the apes exactly what is to be done to the poor cats.

    Apes, get real. If you have a cat, allow it to be a cat. If you don't like what cats do, don't get a cat. Go to the rock shop and buy a piece of stone instead. It won't shed, it won't scratch or claw or pee or poop.

    Whicky Wuudler

    ReplyDelete
  2. Fluffy and CayenneJuly 11, 2009

    We signed the petition in our humans name. Also we forwarded the link to all our friends to sign.
    We agree with Whicky Wuudler that humans don't always know what "declawing" means. They think it is some kind of manicure - very sad!
    But it is even more sad that most of vet doctors are blinded by greediness; they should be the first to refuse to do it and they should be the first to educate their clients.
    Fluffy & Cayenne

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  3. AnonymousJuly 13, 2009

    Our momma sayz dat if you don't want dog hair on da sofa, don't get a dog! Our momma says dat if you don't want claws on a cat, don't get a cat!

    ReplyDelete
  4. My human is so against declawing cats. I'm so glad. All her cats have always kept their claws, just like they are suppose to! Claws are part of us.

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  5. Hey there you carnivors! I can frill curtains if I want to but not with claws. A gentle but constant licking alternating with a bit of a nibble works wonders.And check out my superb architectural skills with cardboard boxes on my blog. All done with claws and nibbling.Beat that you moggies!
    Finaly, the thump. This can cause mayhem in a quiet house at the wrong time for humans. To them it's like a resounding base drum or waiting for the second shoe to drop.It's so easy to control humans so we must pull together.
    Bestest from Harvey the house rabbit.

    ReplyDelete

Help for cats whose humans show behaviour problems.

This blog is devoted to the study of human behaviour. We cats, who live with this sometimes unpredictable and always feeble minded species, can benefit from seeing their behaviour in its proper scientific context. The study of feline dilemmas, training problems, and difficulties with humans, can only benefit all of us. All of us train our humans - to buy the right food, for instance, but many of us do not have knowledge of how to improve our training methods. The human species is obviously not as intelligent as the cat, but nevertheless can learn quite a lot - if properly managed. Topics of interest include the use of claw and order, purring as a human reward, rubbing your human up the right way, when to bite, spraying as a method of making our wishes known, ignoring the human, human harassment, human inattention and sheer human stupidity. I welcome your questions. Photos can be sent via my secretary's website, www.celiahaddon.com This blog has been chosen as one of the top 50 feline blogs by Online VetTechprogramms.org